So...gamers. I'm talking to you. Real talk. If you need any hardware, get it NOW. Get it this christmas. I know I'm kinda late saying this on Dec 23, but Trump tariffs are gonna SCREW UP the entire market.
As some of you know, Trump wants to put a 60% tariff on anything coming from China. This is gonna screw up the market for PC and other hardware majorly. Your typical laptop is gonna go up by $350...which is the cost of a laptop for me, give I'd be buying entry level, or $200 for tablets, which is...again, what I typically spend on that. Of course, I buy at the lower end, but say, $350 for a laptop x1.6...$560, $200x1.6....$320. Yeah. Trump is about to rip you a new one. Want that PS5? Well, $500x1.6...$800. Oh, and dont get me going on the GPU market. $190 for an entry level RX 6600 which is the cheapest GPU i'd recommend in good conscience...$304.
Yeah. Trump is gonna screw you over. Glad I upgraded my PC the last 2 years. Glad I went for a tablet/handheld this year. Hopefully I can make it through this hot mess of an administration, but make sure your tech is new and current, or as new and current as you can get, and hopefully we can weather the next 4 years. This is gonna SUCK.
Why is trump doing this? Ermahgerd, we gotta make america great again by bringing t3h jerbs back!
And I kinda...get it? We all know the economy hasnt been working for Americans for years now. I get why Trump thinks this is the answer, but this isn't it, dawg. We kinda got full employment, we just came off of a small inflationary spiral. THIS IS NOT HELPING! THIS IS GONNA RAISE THE COST OF THINGS. And will it meaningfully improve the life of the american worker. here's a better idea, lets try to improve the jobs we have with some regulation like a higher minimum wage, or maybe have a UBI. And while that arguably could possibly raise costs too, at least the amount of money we have in our pocket compensates for it. If raising the minimum wage doubles wages while raising costs by like 10-20%, that's a win. This raises costs by 30-60% for....what tangible benefit exactly? Other than the aesthetics of doing crappy factory work again. It wasnt the work that was great, it was the pay and benefits and stability they offered. You aren't giving us that. Because that's not what MAGA is about. it's Reaganism with nationalist aesthetics.
Which brings us to the other problem with this. Trump's doing this to give tax breaks to his rich friends. Tariffs are TAXES. They're consumption taxes. He wants to put insanely high tariffs on things and is flirting with eliminating the income tax. What would this do? It means YOU pay more while his rich buddies don't pay anything. They arent putting their taxes in consumption, they're putting it into the stock market and the like. Consumption taxes are REGRESSIVE taxes, where the poor and middle class pays and the wealthy don't.
Hell, there's a reason I dont like the consumption tax way of funding UBI (Sorry, Andrew Yang). It's because while yeah UBI helps people, it also raises the cost of everything which in itself devalues the UBI. A $12000 UBI with a 10% tax like Yang wanted is actually worth $10800. And I know Yang talked about excluding basic goods, but that would just kill the revenue. So yeah, it's not a great idea. Also, you need a 22% consumption tax to fund a $1k UBI. That makes the UBI worth $9360. See why I don't go that route? Income tax eats into peoples gains from work but at least it preserves the base value of the UBI, while theoretically not discouraging work ethic too much. Ya know?
Really, you gotta be careful when you talk about taxation. You gotta think about what youre trying to do, who does this benefit, who does this not benefit, what does this incentivize/not incentivize. Trump is pathologically obsessed with bringing back crappy factory jobs for people, and dont get me wrong, I get the appeal at least aesthetically. people miss the era where we were actually prosperous, but fundamentally dont understand what made us prosperous in the first place, or how out of sync these policies are when you're LITERALLY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PHILLIPS CURVE! Seriously, we got full employment, we dont need more jobs. We need to keep cost of living down while raising peoples' living standards. Americans need a raise. Thats whats wrong with this current inflationary wave. it was mostly predatory price gouging by big corporations. It's been the cost of living going up without a corresponding raise in wages. it isnt even a wage price spiral. It's just....corporations gouging people.
I might not think Harris was great but at least she kinda understood the problem and while I admit in retrospect she could've done a better job at addressing it, at least her solution isn't to LITERALLY MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE!
Seriously. You people who voted for Trump? You're getting what you voted for. Good luck. You'll need it.
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